‘9’ stitchpunk images unveiled

Focus Features has sent over eight images introducing the 9 stitchpunk beings from their upcoming animated film 9, directed by Shane Acker and produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. The film will be released on September 9, 2009 (limited).

Voiced by one of the world’s most respected actors, Christopher Plummer, 1 is the Scientist’s first creation. As the elder, he is the self-declared leader of the group. He is clever and sly, but also domineering, quick-tempered, and threatened by the new arrival of 9, whose higher intellect leads him to question authority.

Voiced by Academy Award Winner Martin Landau, 2 is a kindly but now frail inventor and explorer who embodies the Scientist’s strong creative spirit. An inquisitive personality, 2 is fearless. Director Shane Acker affectionately describes him as a “salty old dog”.

Communicating visually, not verbally, 3 and 4 are the scholarly twins who voraciously catalogue everything they can see and find, recording and building a massive database for the group of the world that surrounds them and the history that led up to their creation.

Voiced by Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly, 5 is a caring, nuturing engineer – the loyal, big-hearted “common man” who always tries to play the peacemaker. He is also an apprentice of 2, with whom he shares a special bond.

6, the group’s visionary is voiced by Crispin Glover. Although reclusive and eccentric, his bursts of artistic inspiration through drawings made from his pen nib hands may be keys to help his fellow stitchpunk beings navigate their darkest hours.

A brave and self-sufficient warrior, 7, voiced by Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, is the group’s sole female. A fiercely independent adventuress she has been out patrolling the wasteland. To survive, she has adapted, finding the bones of a deceased bird and crafting her signature skull helmet.

Armed with a giant kitchen cleaver and half a scissor blade, the none-too-bright muscle and enforcer of the group, 8, is created to help the others physically survive the dangerous post-apocalyptic world.

To voice the lead role of the newly born – and aborning hero — 9, Acker couldn’t help but have in mind an actor who was so central to the film set he had worked on years earlier in New Zealand – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King star Elijah Wood.